I examine the topic of training scientific generalists. To focus the discussion, I propose the creation of a new graduate program, analogous in structure to existing MD/PhD programs, aimed at training a critical mass of scientific researchers with su
bstantial intellectual breadth. In addition to completing the normal requirements for a PhD, students would undergo an intense, several year training period designed to expose them to the core vocabulary of multiple subjects at the graduate level. After providing some historical and philosophical context for this proposal, I outline how such a program could be implemented with little institutional overhead by existing research universities. Finally, I discuss alternative possibilities for training generalists by taking advantage of contemporary developments in online learning and open science.
A number of elite thinkers in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries pursued an agenda which historian Paolo Rossi calls the quest for a universal language, a quest which was deeply interwoven with the emergence of the scientific method. From a mo
dern perspective, one of the many surprising aspects of these efforts is that they relied on a diverse array of memorization techniques as foundational elements. In the case of Leibnizs universal calculus, the ultimate vision was to create a pictorial language that could be learned by anyone in a matter of weeks and which would contain within it a symbolic representation of all domains of contemporary thought, ranging from the natural sciences, to theology, to law. In this brief article, I explore why this agenda might have been appealing to thinkers of this era by examining ancient and modern memory feats. As a thought experiment, I suggest that a society built entirely upon memorization might be less limited than we might otherwise imagine, and furthermore, that cultural norms discouraging the use of written language might have had implications for the development of scientific methodology. Viewed in this light, the efforts of Leibniz and others seem significantly less surprising. I close with some general observations about cross-cultural origins of scientific thought.
I argue that European schools of thought on memory and memorization were critical in enabling the growth of the scientific method. After giving a historical overview of the development of the memory arts from ancient Greece through 17th century Europ
e, I describe how the Baconian viewpoint on the scientific method was fundamentally part of a culture and a broader dialogue that conceived of memorization as a foundational methodology for structuring knowledge and for developing symbolic means for representing scientific concepts. The principal figures of this intense and rapidly evolving intellectual milieu included some of the leading thinkers traditionally associated with the scientific revolution; among others, Francis Bacon, Renes Descartes, and Gottfried Leibniz. I close by examining the acceleration of mathematical thought in light of the art of memory and its role in 17th century philosophy, and in particular, Leibniz project to develop a universal calculus.
Quantum error correction provides a fertile context for exploring the interplay of feedback control, microscopic physics and noncommutative probability. In this paper we deepen our understanding of this nexus through high-level analysis of a class of
quantum memory models that we have previously proposed, which implement continuous-ti
The development of practical methods for synthesis and verification of complex photonic circuits presents a grand challenge for the nascent field of quantum engineering. Of course, classical electrical engineering provides essential foundations and s
erves to illustrate the degree of sophistication that can be achieved in automated circuit design. In this paper we explore the utility of term rewriting approaches to the transformation of quantum circuit models, specifically applying rewrite rules for both reduction/verification and robustness analysis of photonic circuits for autonomous quantum error correction. We outline a workflow for quantum photonic circuit analysis that leverages the Modelica framework for multi-domain physical modeling, which parallels a previously described approach based on VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL).
We examine a proposal by Sherson and Moelmer to generate polarization-squeezed light in terms of the quantum stochastic calculus (QSC). We investigate the statistics of the output field and confirm their results using the QSC formalism. In addition,
we study the atomic dynamics of the system and find that this setup can produce up to 3 dB of atomic spin squeezing.
